Caltech issued letters of highest level disciplinary reprimand to five JPL employees because they used JPL’s internal email system to discuss the implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling on the working conditions at JPL.

Charley James: In a little-noticed piece of legislation he is trying to move through his Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs a bill that would effectively strip independent regulatory agencies of their power to effectively regulate just about anything.

Berry Craig: Romney and his campaign staff must be high-fiving and fist-bumping each other over the Fourth Estaters who are, for whatever reason, acting more like lapdogs than watchdogs in covering him on the campaign trail.

Peter Dreier: Historians will no doubt view President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday favoring same-sex marriage as an equally historic statement, parallel to those of FDR on workers’ rights and LBJ on civil rights.

Steven Mikulan: Conservatives have put aside the boring tasks of creating jobs, loosening credit and saving people’s homes in order to follow their true passion – kicking the ladder away from Americans who are trying to climb up to better lives.

Steve Hochstadt: The Republican presidential candidates were talking to a minority of Americans, telling them they were the only true patriots. The rest of us, poor, gay, black, unionized, believers in science, supporters of a fair tax system, we were disdained.

Walter Brasch: After significant compromise with the recalcitrant Republicans who want to continue to give the wealthy tax advantages while cutting significant social programs, President Obama has finally taken a stand on debt ceiling negotiations. However, in labor, wildlife management, and the environment he is still compromising rather than coming out forcefully for the principles he and the working class and environmentalists believe.

Robert Reich: The only way back toward sustained growth and prosperity in the United States is to remake the basic bargain linking pay to productivity. This would give the American middle class the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going.

Berry Craig: A big reason the South’s white political and business elite hated and feared unions was that in a union everybody is equal. Thus, they played the race card to divide white and African American workers and keep unions at bay.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Walker Foley: Elected officials seem to think there’s only one side of this property rights argument. The people who live in these communities have rights too, but the oil companies seem to have the jump on [the politicians’] side of the fence.